by
Lindsey Siegel, AVLF Staff Attorney and Skadden Fellow
A few months
ago, a client lied to me when she was on the verge of losing her housing. Luckily, she admitted the truth relatively
early in my representation of her, and we were able to explain her actions
honestly and still prevent her from becoming homeless. Though the vast majority of my clients are
honest, in the past year I have had more than one client be less than honest or
fail to give me key information during an interview. When I discovered the dishonesty, my first
reaction was to question everything she’d told me and, occasionally, to lose
enthusiasm in representing her. Since
then, I’ve thought about why it can feel so disappointing when my clients lie, how
it impacts my work, and why clients are sometimes dishonest in the first place.
Because at my
core I believe in the righteousness of the work we do at AVLF, I can get fairly
emotionally involved in my clients’ cases.
When I encounter a client who has lied, it is hard to shake that initial
feeling of betrayal. It can also be
difficult to represent someone when a harmful fact arises for the first time in
the middle of a hearing. In fact, I can
attribute at least one negative case outcome to this scenario, even though my
client had a genuine need for assistance.
Despite lies or omissions, I continue to be concerned about my clients’
abilities to maintain stable housing and employment, secure government
benefits, and most importantly, obtain physical safety. Like many poverty lawyers, I sometimes obsess
about the significant effect losing one of these cases has on my clients’ and
their families’ lives.
It is also
difficult to navigate the various ethical issues that arise when representing a
client who has been dishonest about some fact, especially when that fact is
central to our case. If I come to
believe prior to a hearing that a client has lied to me, I worry about
proffering false testimony. Of course, if
I insist that the client admit the truth under oath, we may lose the case. Withdrawing from the case is another option,
though it is unappealing to leave a client unrepresented (as they almost always
will remain) when the stakes are so high.
Though I memorized the rules of professional conduct in preparation for
my practice of law, implementing them with real clients who need assistance has
been much more challenging than I would have guessed it would be.
At AVLF, the vast majority of our clients have
very few resources, despite working or looking for work to support their
families. Often their basic
needs—safety, housing, food—are not being met, and they are doing what they can
for their and their children’s survival.
I have learned that sometimes a client is going to say what she thinks
we want to hear in order to obtain assistance.
Other clients believe we will judge them if they admit to making certain
decisions; and past experiences with government or social service agencies may
have taught them this lesson. My
clients’ past experiences and economic realities have influenced my impression
of their occasional dishonesty.
Practicing this
type of law involves recognizing that even our clients who have experienced
abuse and injustice aren’t perfect, just as we are not perfect in our
representation of them. The best we can
do is try to discover the truth, recognize the potential complications in our
representation, and understand the barriers our clients face. And if we imagine stepping into their shoes,
we may wonder what we would do in a similarly desperate situation.
No comments:
Post a Comment